you would not see any hits in quality whatsoever? >> the point is that the quality control would be built-in through the threat of losing contracts. i mean, you can't guarantee that every contractor, every contract is going to be carried out to the highest level that you would want. but you have the ability to quickly and decisivelily replace a failing contractor with another one from the pre qualified list. it builds in a kind of control mechanism that lets you get rid of bad apples should some arise. >> that dove tails on -- you mentioned reforms in the security partnership program moving away from the tsa's current practice of spelling out procedures, technology and compensati compensation. what changes do you anticipate producing in the current ssp airports? spp, excuse me. >> right. i did not try to spell all that out. i think what we want to do is encourage innovation. >> right, yeah. >> get away from the one size fits all model that there's only

one best way. i don't know a better way to do passenger screening, but given that i support the risk base approach the tsa is moving toward. if you give contractors outcome measures and stress more competition, we may find some methods that are more than combined people and technology in ways that lead to more productive system. that's a system that leads to that. >> what do you think holds airports back from joining the spp? >> you know, this is only speculation. but we've created a kind of a difficult situation. because tsa is their regulator of everything. they're -- in effect, if they want to join spp, they basically have to kick the tsa out. that's a difficult thing for a very visible airport to do. it creates potential for not very good relationship in the subsequent years. we mostly see small airports doing this so far. >> what would be incentive to get airports into the spp

program? >> i think if the airports themselves had a bigger role in it, if they were able to select their own contractor, for example and manage the relationship, i think a lot more of them wobbling to take that course because they would see it as they would have more to gain by developing that relationship rather than having tsa assign someone to them. >> okay. mr. nelson, when did you get your wings? >> august of 1990. >> little after me. my time has expired. i have more questions, but i'll yield back to the chair. >> i thank the gentleman. chair recognizes ranking member. >> mr. chairman, thank you again for your kindness. let me quickly poll quick questions at the chairman's courtesy. ms. alonso, i think you're familiar with a known crew member program operated by tsa which is receiving high praises which is a -- in implementing a risk-based screening process. this system allows pilots to expedite screening procedures as

long as the pilots are validated to be on the job and in good standing. can be elaborate why flight attendants or crew members could also benefit from the program and whether it should be extended to them and could this be accomplished without compromising security and then what protections can we integrate in the system to ensure that only working crew members in good standing can use the system? >> yes. ranking member jackson lee, we're under the same security screening and background check and scrutiny as the pilots. sometimes we're required to be in the cockpit and the last line of defense on the aircraft. >> we feel it should not be a breach of security for us to have the same clearance to go through another alternative screening process. as far as protections go, it's up to the airlines to keep the database current with up to date data and employee records and to require employees that are terminated or separated, for instance, on leave, et cetera,

to return their i.d.s in a timely manner. that is mandated by law. >> just a quick question. in the last faa bill, it seems like the airlines are requiring to give you training on serving alcoholic beverages. do you think that that required training suggests that the idea of securing the airline, the idea of being the first responders in the cabin should also be required training? >> absolutely. we do feel that currently having only a voluntarily crew member self-defense training added to our yearly additional recurrent training which the faa requires is not sufficient. five to 30 minutes is what's currently in place for flight attendants to be prepared for security breaches. it's developed and provided by the carriers themselves. and it just doesn't allow us to

be prepared at the level we should be. >> let me just say, watching you do your work and seeing the doors of the cockpit open and seeing the only ones being able to go while we're in flight as flight attendants, i can assure you that i believe that you are warranted in this security and warranted in this training. mr. chairman, i'm just going to ask to put on the record that i hope that we can work together on a cabin, in-cabin security hearing. her experience evidences the need of that. i look forward to working with you on that, mr. chairman. i have one more quick question. mr. poole, you cite to a usa today investigation 2007 that filed a tsa screeners at o'hare and lax missed three times as many hidden bombs as privately contracted screeners at san francisco. i am sure you're aware that a 2006 dhs office of the inspector general reported that covenant aviation ee physicians at san francisco compromised covert security testing between august 2003 and august 2004. are you at all concerned that a

private company seeking to maximize profits and retain a contract may work to hypotension deficiency such as the officials did within two years after their contract and then, of course, is it not correct for many of us who believe that the federal government who has a pure perspective, their service is to the american people not to their pocketbooks would, in essence, and to the american people's pocketbooks be efficient but to compromise security is a very dangerous perspective. why are you pushing complete privatization of tsa? >> it's not complete privatization, ms. jackson-lee. what i'm arciguing for is sanctions for poor performance and the threat of having contracts revoked is a very powerful threat. business model can't really survive if you stand a good chance of losing the very thing that brings in revenue.

so that's the model. it's not total privatization in any sense. the tsa would still be the regulator and it may be that the need for sanctions should be stronger in the event of contractor malperformance. >> let me just say that those airports that have private contractors, i work harmoniously with them and certainly those are in place. but expansion of the program, i think, is questionable even to the extent of having sanctions but i appreciate your clarification. i think all of us collectively at this hearing, mr. chairman, are committed to securing the homeland and making tsa the most effective agency that it can be, along with our flight crew, both our pilots and our flight attendants who are on the frontlines of any airline that is traveling and traveling both domestically and internationally. let me thank you, mr. chairman, and i yield back. >> i thank the gentle lady. the chair recognizes himself for a second series of questions. >> talking about how this group of approved contractors could

function and you talked about bidding based on size of airport or whatever. is there another example of that outside the -- obviously, there's not one in tsa. we think it should be. is there a department that you're trying to model after, that does something like that? >> actually, in the airport screening area itself, canada is 100% private sector screening. last i checked, there were 12 certified companies in canada that -- >> and the government certifies that? >> the government certifies them. it's an agency which they created in canada when we created the tsa following 9/11. they certify the companies that meet the standards. >> do they go in and supervise them at the airport? >> that's correct. >> one of the things from a previous hearing from the private sector, at the airports where we already have private contractors, the number of tsa

personnel supervising is exorbitant. like 100 or more tsa people for a contractor. do you all see that? mr. blank, have you seen that in any instances or heard any complaints or criticisms about that? >> well, first of all, let me say that many of the things that we're talking about here, i believe and i think tsa would support would require changes in order to be able to do -- from a legal perspective. but in terms of the -- in terms of supervisors, i've heard that criticism. but i am not aware that it's of -- of its accuracy. >> mr. poole, i see you nodding affirmatively. >> i wanted to say that part of the problem is that the way tsa runs spp, it's tsa that is the contract manager. and the relationship is between tsa and the private company.

in the model suggest -- tsa would regulate the overall airport security as -- >> tsa wouldn't have personnel on the ground supervising? >> it wouldn't have the same extent of supervision of the contract. it would be supervising it as part of the overall surveillance of the airport. so the -- >> other than canada, any other country you can think of that does that? >> almost all of the major european airports. policy in europe varies somewhat from country to country. i was not able to find any european country, any eu member that has a combination of regulation and screening provision. either the airport that does it or private contractors reporting to the airport. >> mr. nelson, mr. blake he brought up a concept that i frankly wasn't -- i think that it's very appealing and as you heard from the ranking member, she finds it very appealing as

well. y'all mentioned the fbi director as an example. i'd like to know if there's anybody else -- is there another department where this works like the fbi? that comes to the top of your head? >> i mentioned, i believe in my statement that the faa administrator is also a five-year term. >> okay. let me ask this. this goes to mr. nelson. you made the point that the reason you answered no when i talked about the bloat of the bureaucracy is that the administrator is what we need and you support him. i have great respect for administrator pistol. i think he's extremely competent fella and doing the best he can under the circumstances. let me ask it to you this way. mr. pistol does not have a definite term. he works at the pleasure of the president. and under the supervision of the secretary. if administrator pistol had a

ten-year term limit or eight years or whatever and mr. pistol then said, we need 70% of what we've got right now and i can do just fine and take that other money and redirect it in some areas that are more helpful and as far as threat-based information. would you then think that was what -- whatever that administrator felt like would happen would be what you still support? >> mr. chairman, i think i understand the question. i would like to see an evolution towards a more risk-based security model. >> i'm talking about the personnel. here's my concern. the administrator at present serves at the pleasure of the president. this president has a very close relationship with organized labor. they don't want to see federal employees be reduced. so even if the administrators felt like we had 20 or 30 or 40% too many employees, he can't let them go because when he starts letting them go, the president is going to call him up and go, no, we're not going to go there.

see my point? i like the idea that y'all made if they were -- had a term, the politics would get out of it. it could be the other way around. you could have a republican president and there's something that the republican president didn't like. i like the idea of somebody who is competent and capable having the latitude to make the managerial decisions like in the private sector without the risk of a phone call from the white house to say you've irritated a group of or constituency of mine that i don't want irritated. see my point? that's one of the things i find appealing. plus trying to attract quality and competent people who aren't going to be worried about getting a phone call any day that they're gone. it's an interesting concept. just told me that congressman wolff has a bill to do something like that. i'm going to see if we can't move something like that along. it's got great potential. do you have any more questions? >> actually, mr. chair, you asked them. so thank you. >> then i want to keep going.

you're all mine. mr. blank, tell me what your thoughts are. let me tell you one of my concerns about this as i was processing this concept. unlike the fbi, which the president appoints, this administrator has to work under the secretary of homeland security. how would you deal with that -- do you foresee any conflicts that occur if the secretary can't fire the administrator because of term limits? >> i think certainly that could come up. but i would start by saying that may be a good thing if we have that kind of independence and that kind of security in somebody that's going to take on a responsibility to our national security on this particular level. i think that's one of the -- one of the valuable things relative to an fbi director who can't be

shoved aside with a sharp elbow by an attorney general. >> okay. mr. nelson, again, i want to point to our boards. can you see those? if you'll look at the red line, that is the personnel levels that we have in tsa. the blue graph are lines going up and down is the number of travelers that we've had. you'll see the big dip. now we're starting to see a little tick back up. the number of people full-time employees that we've got working is dramatically higher that than the level of flight activity that we have. do you have a problem with that? i hate to pick on you. but you're the only one that said no. >> mr. chairman. it's your prerogative. please pick on me. it's a fair point. in my government career, we saw

this cut with the pilots in 1993 in the military in '93 and '95 because we had a peace dividend and we cut the personnel. five or six years later, we were trying to make up for the cut. we did the same thing with intelligence officers prior to 9/11. we cut case officers because we didn't need them anymore. all of a sudden, we needed them and decided the cia had half the workforces come on board since 9/11. i'm cautious when we use personnel cuts alone as a solution to a budget problem or solution to a security model problem. i'm all for revamping how tsa operates to make alternate changes, investing in science and technology, investing in risk-based security which requires us to invest more in intelligence sharing. you can't have a risk-based model with personnel screeners, physical screeners without having improved intelligence. >> that goes to what mr. bloom was offering in his opening statement earlier.

he wants less emphasis on technology and more on intelligence gathering human-based assets. which i agree with. what i want to emphasize is with that number, it's hard for us as policy makers to make the case for spending money on those assets because people think we're wasting what we're giving out. the fact is, in our current environment, we're not getting any more money in the department of homeland security. i think the department of homeland security and the department of defense are -- because of the dangerous world we live, are not going to be as affected by cuts as other departments may be because we've got to be safe and secure. but the days of numbers going up are over. having said that, we got to find a way to take the number we've got, which is roughly $35 billion, and reshuffle it so that it's more effective and what i contend is that we can't justify that number particularly

when people are going to the airports with their terrible perspective or perceptions of s tsa and expect us to go along -- we can't keep treating grandma like she's from a middle eastern country like yemen. so i want to see that shift. that's why i keep emphasizing in these hearings, we can't keep doing that if we want to be able to do what you suggest, that is more to more threat-based infrastructure and process than we have now. the fact is the public is outraged with tsa. trust me, as chairman of this committee, i hear it daily. it doesn't matter if i'm in walmart or sunday school. people hate the tsa. and we've got to do something about that. because we need this system and we've got to have a system that -- not something like this to protect us. it's still a very dangerous

world. i get the briefings as the members of the committee. we got to be smarter and leaner in the way we do things. which brings me back to the threat-based approach. mr. bloom, you talked about a shift away from technology to more intelligence gathering, smart systems. tell me more about what you mean by that. what would you like to see specifically? >> a couple of things. going back quickly to a comment made by ranking member jackson-lee about the current size of tsa, whether it should be reduced or not. i believe no one has made a coherent rationale for how that size correlates with the risk and what those folks are supposed to be doing against whatever the risk might be. until we have answers to those questions, staying with the resources we have right now, it's really an undefendable position. that really has to be worked. also because just about everyone here believes a risk approach is the way to go. well, that means you have to

have another standing of threat and vulnerability. the threat is basically intelligence-based. how are you going to figure out what the threat might be. it changes from moment by moment. that's why both tech and humans, technical and human intelligence, collecting the information and analyzing it and transmitting it in secure and responsive fashion to all the people who are responsible for our layers of security for aviation for other transportation modalities, that whole system is really crucial. once that is optimal or close to it, that's when we know exactly how much we can reduce given the economic assignment we're in. >> thank you very much. we have a question. >> i'm going to yield for a second. in this very committee room, didn't secretary a napolitano say we were going to a risk-based type of -- >> she has and administrator pistol have. but -- it's at a snail's pace.

>> wouldn't that be the exact opposite about what's happening here in regards to personnel? was she willing to not fund last line of defense measures using risk-based analysis. i wanted to bring that -- >> when we had administrator pistol here about a month ago, that was one of my questions. it's a great first step. you heard me talk about it in my opening statement. we got to go faster and broader. that kind of program is what we got to do. we're taking known travelers who travel every week. we know more about them than they think we know. we know they're not a threat. move them out of the line. the things we can do with other people that are intelligence-based that we can get them away from being treated like they're fundamentalist terrorist. islamic fundamentalist. we're not getting the kind of movement that backs up that

rhetoric. let me ask this. by the way, mr. blank, you made a great observation about the supervisors given more discretion. we've been after them to do that. that's another example of what we're frustrated about is these -- this is not rocket science. they've had this pointed out and say we're going to do it. like what mr. gras vet was talking about. they say we're going to do it but it's not happening. what can you think of would be a good way for this committee to put some action behind that rhetoric on that particular issue with supervisors? >> on the chart that you had up, first of all, if i can, i want to address the personnel levels. the chart that you had up. >> put that back up, please. >> every one of the red x's is the result of a formula the tsa has devised. in other words, they take inputs. in the early going, we had a lousy formula. we hired 65,000 people. we had to lay off nearly 20,000 people. >> uh-huh. >> they revised the formula.

when you see a number of full-time equivalents and what i'm suggesting is you want to ask what are the elements of that formula. it has things like time to screen people. you should ask where are the promised efficiencies from technology. we've been promised that for years and years, that was going to drive down ftes. doesn't seem to have materialized. you're right. less flights should mean less screeners. they have a role in that in physical intrastructure. there are all these inputs that i think the tsa should have to come and justify to you because it is the result of not a human judgment. it's the result of a formula that has them moving towards a particular staffing level. i think in terms of the supervisors, i believe that administrator pistol testified he didn't have the money to do the training. my own feeling is that money is not the problem of tsa.

it should be a relatively simple matter in my view to reprogram existing funds toward doing the training for the supervisors in order to have them be utilized as we've suggested and discussed here. >> great. let me ask this. i'll throw this out to whoever wants to answer this. everybody nodded affirmatively when i appreciated the initiative is going too slow. >> very frequent travelers are put into that. who else should be included? who would you go to, the next couple of categories of people? mr. poole? >> you can start with everyone who holds a secret or higher clearance. why on earth these people are handling sensitive defense material entrusted with that, why should they go through the third degree at the airport? >> that's a great idea. who else? >> ms. alonso. >> i would go back to my statement previous that flight attendants go through the same

background checks, and security screenings as pilots. i'm sure that everyone here has experienced a delay where we have had to cut ahead of passengers in line. >> oh, yeah. >> not only is -- >> happened yesterday. i was standing in line at the atlanta airport. >> we apologize. >> didn't bother me. but i know other travelers are upset about it. >> it's not only about time. it's about security as well. when i have to put my items on the belt and i have to make sure that no one around them is doing anything to my bags, it's very difficult for me to maintain vigilance on all ends at all times based upon the security procedures that are set up in place. i mean, i can stand there for a certain amount of time. then they move me along to get -- >> you're not advocating not going through any screening. just the pre -- >> we're not advocating superseding security screening. we're asking to use the alternative screening processes set up in place that the pilots use at this time.

>> two great examples. mr. nell sonnelson? >> i would start by allowing the fleck flyers to -- if i'm a frequent flyer on delta and not united, i fly on united, i get the same screening. that's not happening now. that's an easy fix. >> that's another great idea. mr. bloom? >> i'd just like to point out in a respectful way that although all these suggestions are good, they're nothing on the terrorist threat or make the country any safer. in a way, the suggestions are dealing with the side effects of a very imperfect medication and what we should be looking at instead while we try to come up with a better medication is dealing with a disease. that's where the intelligence activities come. >> i agree. i'm after a smarter way of using our resources so that we're leaner for public perception purposes and smarter, which gets to your point.

the more of these people we can get out of the line, the easier it is for us to look thoroughly at who is left. is this their first time ever to fly? did they buy a one-way ticket? did they pay cash? all the things we want to look for. it's more manageable. we have a smaller group. that's why i want to get supreme court justices have no business going through -- maybe after the ruling two weeks ago. but they have no business going through that. you've got -- donald rumsfeld getting patted down at the airport. henry kissinger. that's mind numbing that that's happening. >> just to briefly follow-up. there was a national academy of sciences study done a few years ago that recommended a partial random, partial i'll use the term profile even though it's politically loaded. combination of random and profiling with a partial sample of the total traveling public as

the most cost effective approach to support security. >> there's a host of things we can do from the intelligence threat-based perspective on that. and i would point out for the people in the audience who don't know, even if you're in the pre-check. i go through pre-check when i fly delta. there's a reason we can do that with other airlines. i don't get that on u.s. air. no offense ms. alonso, which i fly regularly too. there's no reason why that shouldn't be the case. no matter which airline you're flying. but there's a lot of other thing that we can do to get these people out of line. that's what i want to emphasize. i want us to be a much smarter, much more threat-based and effective organization that has the public's confidence. right now we don't. that's a real concern to me as a policy maker that the public does not have confidence in the tsa. y'all have been very good panel, very thought-provoking. great ideas and i appreciate

your time for preparing for your testimony and for your attendance here today. with that, this hearing is adjourned. on washington journal wednesday, we'll look at the provisions of the affordable care act with donald mayor ron and joseph henchman. we'll be joined by peter moore, editor of men's health magazine to talk about the magazine's recent story on surveillance across the u.s., including which studies are the most watched. washington journal is